Chan Lowe: Mitt Romney, official Republican candidate

Mitt Romney has one huge ace in the hole. Clearly, the reason for his recent surge in the popularity polls isn’t due to an overnight personality transplant.

No, it’s because there is a sizeable proportion of the electorate that would vote for a cardboard cutout figure for president if it could unseat the Great Pretender (actually, they’re about to, but that’s a subject for another cartoon).

We won’t discuss race in this context, because that gets people all huffy and self-righteous. Instead, we’ll just say that, to many Americans, Obama doesn’t fit the mold of what they expect of an occupant of the White House. Otherwise, why does an absurdity like Birtherism continue to thrive in spite of rock-solid proof to the contrary? Some use the code that Obama is “not American” because his father was born in Kenya. Well, Mitt Romney’s father was born in Mexico, but we don’t hear questions about his Americanness.

When you ask those who blindly, viscerally hate Barack Obama what bothers them about him, they’ll often answer that he’s a socialist. When you ask them what he has done that is socialistic, they usually cite Obamacare, because other than that legislation, it’s hard to find anything he has done that could be construed as “socialist.” Or they’ll bring up TARP, which they forget was signed into law by George W. Bush. The truth is Obama’s been governing more or less from the center (just ask a liberal).

As for Obamacare, when you present the haters with its constituent provisions without the label, they tend to like them. Obamacare is average-American friendly, which is why it passed in the first place.

Which leaves us with…what? Like I said, that’s not something we’re going to discuss.